Novato woman sentenced to two months for embezzlement

A 46-year-old Novato woman was sentenced to up to 10 months in Marin County Jail on Wednesday after pleading guilty to embezzling more than $300,000 from a San Rafael real estate firm.

Imelda Lavitoria will serve at least 60 days in jail under a sentence by Marin Superior Court Judge Kelly Simmons, but she will avoid the remaining jail time if she repays the embezzled money.

Lavitoria was arrested in March after it was revealed she had taken more than $300,000 from her employer, San Rafael-based Robert Butler Co. Inc., and its clients.

Lavitoria had spent more than 16 years with the company, which specializes in managing and selling apartment buildings. At the sentencing hearing, company owner Robert Butler said he had trusted Lavitoria for the 16-and-a-half years she worked for him.

"The emotional impact is perhaps worse than the money thing," Butler said. "I just don't quite understand how it all happened."

The roots of the case stretch to 2003, when Lavitoria borrowed $380,000 from a Butler Co. client who was suffering from the beginning stages of dementia, Butler said in a statement filed with the court. The client died in 2011, and an attorney for his son approached Butler about the debt in January 2012.

Butler investigated, and found that Lavitoria, in an apparent attempt to repay the loan, had written herself company checks, obtained cash advances from company credit cards and taken money from the bank accounts of apartment complexes under the company's management.

"To say that I felt betrayed and astonished is an understatement," Butler said in a written court statement. "After all the years we had worked together, she was like one of the family."

Teary-eyed and surrounded by more than a half-dozen supporters after the sentencing, Lavitoria declined to comment. In statements filed with the court she expressed regret.

"I did a terrible mistake," she said in a letter filed with the court last month. "I am deeply sorry for this and will forever be sorry for what I have done."